Space Education with The Living Textbook, A web-based tool using a Concept Browser

The ability to recognize the relationships between concepts is a crucial aspect of meaningful learning. Expert-generated concept maps have been shown to help students in forging connections by acting as scaffolds for cognitive processing. The Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) of the University of Twente is developing a Living Textbook which combines an online knowledge repository with an interactive map visualizing the relationships between concepts. Our teachers and students have started to use this in the core modules at the start of our MSc programme. Tests show that this is a promising approach that drives us to further develop its procedures and applications

Gender Pay Gap in Sports on a Fan-Request Celebrity Video Site

The internet is often thought of as a democratizer, enabling equality in aspects such as pay, as well as a tool introducing novel communication and monetization opportunities. In this study we examine athletes on Cameo, a website that enables bi-directional fancelebrity interactions, questioning whether the well-documented gender pay gaps in sports persist in this digital setting. Traditional studies into gender pay gaps in sports are mostly in a centralized setting where an organization decides the pay for the players, while Cameo facilitates grass-roots fan engagement where fans pay for video messages from their preferred athletes. The results showed that even on such a platform gender pay gaps persist, both in terms of cost-per-message, and in the number of requests, proxied by number of ratings. For instance, we find that female athletes have a median pay of 30$per-video, while the same statistic is 40$ for men. The results also contribute to the study of parasocial relationships and personalized fan engagements over a distance. Something that has become more relevant during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where in-person fan engagement has often been limited

Cross-Priming of Naive Cd8 T Cells against Melanoma Antigens Using Dendritic Cells Loaded with Killed Allogeneic Melanoma Cells

The goal of tumor immunotherapy is to elicit immune responses against autologous tumors. It would be highly desirable that such responses include multiple T cell clones against multiple tumor antigens. This could be obtained using the antigen presenting capacity of dendritic cells (DCs) and cross-priming. That is, one could load the DC with tumor lines of any human histocompatibility leukocyte antigen (HLA) type to elicit T cell responses against the autologous tumor. In this study, we show that human DCs derived from monocytes and loaded with killed melanoma cells prime naive CD45RA+CD27+CD8+ T cells against the four shared melanoma antigens: MAGE-3, gp100, tyrosinase, and MART-1. HLA-A201+ naive T cells primed by DCs loaded with HLA-A201− melanoma cells are able to kill several HLA-A201+ melanoma targets. Cytotoxic T lymphocyte priming towards melanoma antigens is also obtained with cells from metastatic melanoma patients. This demonstration of cross-priming against shared tumor antigens builds the basis for using allogeneic tumor cell lines to deliver tumor antigens to DCs for vaccination protocols

A Study of Internet Spending and Graduation Rates: A Correlational Study

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between school district spending on Internet access and student achievement, defined by graduation rates, in the state of Florida. Internet funding received for Internet access from E-rate funding administered by the Universal Service Administration Company (USAC) and graduation rates of the 67 school districts in the state of Florida were compared. Further, the data were adjusted for socio-economic status (SES) to determine the relationship between school districts\u27 SES and spending on Internet access. Lastly, school district connectivity and bandwidth were examined to determine whether the ConnectED initiative requirements were related to student achievement and the implementation of school district digital learning programs. E-rate funding and graduation rates were not correlated. Regression and multiple regression analyses demonstrated that Internet spending, bandwidth, and ratio of computers to students did not statistically predict graduation rates during the years of the study

The effects of restoration on biodiversity, water quality and greenhouse gas fluxes in a rich fen peatland

Rich fens are globally significant wetlands due to their high biodiversity and provision of multiple ecosystem services, such as water purification and climate mitigation. However, many U.K. rich fens have become botanically degraded. This is principally due to abandonment, following the cessation of management (mowing/grazing) and has led to a decline in plant species richness. Although the response to mowing on plant species richness has been well documented across Europe, there is no prior knowledge of this research being undertaken at U.K rich fens. Additionally, the effects of mowing on water quality are largely unquantified. Furthermore, the spatial heterogeneity of greenhouse gases across and within botanically rich and botanically poor sites is also unknown. Two rich fen plant communities: Cladio-Molinietum (n=9) and Scheonus nigricans - Juncus subnodulosus (n=8) were examined across three sites; chosen for their conservation value and current degraded condition. A 50 % success rate was achieved following mowing to increase species richness, which meant assumptions were not met for both plant communities. Nitrate, phosphate and dissolved organic carbon concentrations did not reduce following mowing, however there was a beneficial increase in concentration of base cations at both sites. The greenhouse gas investigation revealed that the net gaseous carbon flux between both sites was comparable, which did not meet expectations that the botanically impoverished site would have higher carbon emissions, however, expected differences between plant communities were observed at both sites. Therefore, this study shows the complexity of the botanical, hydro-chemical and greenhouse gas spatial heterogeneity at rich fens. Careful examination prior to restoration is needed to determine whether environmental/ecological barriers have been removed, so that restoration is not in any way inhibited. In addition, this study has demonstrated that objectives for biodiversity may be in conflict with objectives to manage for other ecosystem services, in these multi-functional wetlands

Een Franse opsnijder in de Republiek. De architect Georges-François Blondel

The architect Georges-Francois Blondel (1730-after 1792), son of the well-known architecture-theoretician J.F. Blondel, has always remained a somewhat shadowy figure, also because his life and career took place in several countries. In this article all the biographical information known about him so far has been compiled for the first time, largely on the basis of older literature. Initially, G.F. Blondel was educated by his father, but stayed in Rome from 1756 to 1760, where he was impressed by Piranesi; some drawings based on the latter's ‘Carceri d'invenzione’ show this influence. Back in Italy he earned his living in Paris, later in London, with making topographical prints; in the sixties he organized a number of exhibitions of his own work at the Society of Artists and the Free Society. In those days he also became involved in the building activities of Richard Grenville at the latters estate Stowe, where a few unexecuted designs are reminiscent of this, for instance of a new garden façade and a mausoleum for the owner. After having stayed in Amsterdam for a short period in 1762, he settled in the Dutch Republic once again by the end of 1773. With no less than three - unpreserved - designs he competed for the famous Groningen Town Hall competition of 1774, but he failed to win any prize: the opinion of the well-known physician Petrus Camper, who actually formed the jury on his own, was rather negative. Blondel, on the other hand, had a high opinion of himself, as was already evident before, and when he finally returned to France in 1777, he took pride in his contacts and merits in a letter to the Minister of War. In Paris, however, he had been forgotten, and later he disappeared in anonymity once again. Only in the early years of the French Revolution did he make himself heard, when he launched various plans to improve hygiene in Paris, and also accused a colleague of plagiarism by claiming the copyright of the latter's triumphal arch and altar for the fatherland, erected in 1790 on the occasion of the first commemoration of Quatorze Juillet